11 Tasks to Delegate to a Virtual Assistant for Therapists

Establishing your private practice would have already taken you hours of study, testing, and client sessions. Running and managing the business side of your practice comes with even more hours of responsibility on a daily basis.

Virtual assistants for therapists offer their services to free you up from the other responsibilities outside of your specialization so you can focus on delivering the service that your clients deserve. They can largely help you with the administrative, marketing, customer service, and operations side of your practice.

In this article, you’ll discover the key tasks you can delegate to a virtual assistant for therapists to help you in successfully growing your practice.

1. Schedule Management

Finding the balance between being a therapist and a business owner starts with a clear schedule. When your referral network starts to grow and clients are booking appointments left and right, it becomes highly useful to have someone else manage your schedule.

Like an in-office clinic assistant, virtual assistants for therapists also conduct schedule management for their clients. This involves booking appointments and moving time blocks around when rescheduling is needed.

This responsibility also includes managing the time you have in between appointments, relaying your availability to clients, and making sure you’re having the best possible use of your time.

2. Inbox Management

You can also delegate the management of all communication to your virtual assistant. This is especially important in managing incoming calls, emails, and texts when you’re with a client.

Having someone be able to respond quickly builds on the credibility of your private practice, and helps in avoiding the loss of business opportunities.

3. Social Media Marketing

With the pandemic normalizing online therapy sessions, effort towards building your practice’s digital presence is highly valuable.

As physical therapists and nutrition professionals do on social media, you can also establish thought leadership and connect with possible clients through social media.

Virtual assistants for therapists offer social media marketing services like content creation, social media outreach, media planning, social media posting, and other skills that are very useful even to other businesses.

When you hire a virtual assistant, don’t forget to look into the possibility of having them manage your business’s social media presence as well.

4. Email Marketing

More on the business side of growing your practice, email marketing is another powerful tool for keeping in touch with your clients, getting referrals, finding new customers, and so much more.

Marketing virtual assistants for therapists can help you build and execute campaigns that promote your business to a larger audience.

With proper orientation, you can have them create and design email templates, strategize your campaigns, and even write the text that your readers receive.

Returns of about $44 for every $1 spent on email marketing can be produced just from this one channel. When hiring, don’t forget to ask if your virtual assistant can help you get started on this.

Besides promotional email marketing, they can help you manage your email inboxes for patient inquiries and messages.

5. Website Management

Nowadays, having a website is a must for any business. Global reach and local SEO are two benefits that you can’t ignore when it comes to having a business website.

Virtual assistants for therapists can assist you in setting up a simple WordPress or Wix website. Not only that, but they can help you grow your website into a better digital experience for your prospects and clients.

Try starting out with a homepage that details your services and contact information. From there you can grow into having FAQs, testimonial pages, blogs, sign-up sheets, etc. 

Your website can help clients discover your business, find out more about your practice, and even streamline your appointment scheduling process.

This can be highly valuable for therapists who specialize in specific areas like occupational therapy, counseling, and rehabilitation.

6. Online Business Management

An online business manager (OBM) is a valuable resource in growing your practice without spending more hours working or less time with clients.

As your online business manager, a virtual assistant can provide help in business development areas of your practice. They can help you in recruiting more people for your team, conduct market research, track and report on business metrics, etc.

An OBM can help you effectively position your business so that the right people seeking the help you provide can find it faster. Not only that, but they also help in alleviating the stress that comes with running a private practice by taking over administrative and operational tasks.

7. Document Processing

Paperwork exists in almost any industry. For therapists, this can include online sign-up sheets, liability agreements, consent forms, prescriptions, and so much more.

Delegating the organization and preparation for most of your documents to a virtual assistant can give you more time to accommodate more patients or even prepare yourself before the next appointment.

For physical and occupational therapists, this can also mean more time to rest for the next day.  Basically, delegating tasks to virtual assistants can give you more time for some much-needed self-care.

Keep in mind that HIPAA regulations value security and confidentiality so try to find virtual assistants you can trust. You can do this by conducting background checks, asking for references, or even just hiring through an agency that will do this for you, like Virtudesk.

8. Telehealth Assistance

Virtual assistants are popular for offering virtual reception services to multiple industries. You can leverage this skill by hiring a healthcare virtual assistant to provide telehealth reception to your clients.

They can assist in client registrations, educate clients about your services and their options, and also confirm and schedule appointments for you.

Having someone provide continued care for your clients even when you’re unavailable improves the quality of service your practice provides. Not only that, but it also builds on your business’s reputation as a service provider.

As this role may deal with protected health information (PHI), make sure your cloud-based electronic medical records (EMR) system is secure and HIPAA-compliant. 

You can also add another layer of security with tools like LastPass for passwords, and a remote management tool like Timedly, that takes screenshots of your remote assistant’s activity.

9. Invoice and Billing

Creating invoices from templates and sending billing information to clients can be a tedious task especially when insurance claims and other matters are involved. For healthcare providers, this responsibility is further elevated when Superbills are involved.

Instead of spending your time creating invoices and Superbills, you can instead have a virtual assistant prepare all of these for your clients.

They can be the ones in charge of preparing these statements and handling billing inquiries from your clients. In line with this, they’ll also be responsible for sending gentle reminders to clients due for payments.

10. Claims Management

As part of your virtual assistant’s responsibility to help your clients gain access to your services more easily, they can also be trained to assist clients with clarifying inquiries about their claims.

This will involve knowing about CPT codes and being able to explain to clients the coverage of their health benefits.

This contributes greatly to making therapy more accessible to the general public and also improves the level of service you provide to your clients.

A virtual assistant knowledgeable on insurance and healthcare coverage can also help you gain more clients faster by providing the correct information during inquiry calls and messages.

11. Testing Coordination

To further enhance the level of service you provide to your clients, you can also train your virtual assistant to help out your clients with the tests that they require to better understand the therapy that they need.

Your virtual assistant can help your clients find facilities in and out of your network that would provide them with the tests they need. They can also guide your clients in the proper preparations they need before tests so you can get the most accurate results.

This can include knowledge of psychological testing centers, and facilities that offer comprehensive physical assessments in your network or within your clients’ area.

Delegating Tasks to a Virtual Assistant for Therapists

A virtual assistant is an investment for the growth of your practice as a business. When your daily tasks start to pile up, it’s wise to have someone else handle work outside of your actual practice. That’s the best time to hire a virtual assistant for therapists.

Not only can virtual assistants help you save time and help you run your practice, but it will cost you significantly less than hiring an in-house employee or assistant. Many business owners can save upward of 78% on payroll and operational expenses by hiring a virtual assistant.

If you’re interested in enriching your practice with the help of a virtual assistant, fill out this form and one of our Consultants will get in touch with you.

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